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Rhaella giving birth to Dany on Dragonstone is a pretty well-documented event. It was also several months after Lyanna would have already been dead, unless you think it took Ned nine months to get to Lyanna after the Sack.

We also know that Jon was born at or around the time of the Sack, that the war lasted about a year and that the war is dated to when Jon Arryn called his banners, which wasn't until after Aerys had killed the Starks. By the time Jon would have even been conceived, Brandon was already dead.

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Rhaella giving birth to Dany on Dragonstone is a pretty well-documented event. It was also several months after Lyanna would have already been dead, unless you think it took Ned nine months to get to Lyanna after the Sack.

We also know that Jon was born at or around the time of the Sack, that the war lasted about a year and that the war is dated to when Jon Arryn called his banners, which wasn't until after Aerys had killed the Starks. By the time Jon would have even been conceived, Brandon was already dead.

Yeah, I just recently came across the passage where Dany is remembering that she was born on Dragonstone 9 moons after the sack of KL. Which, would mean she was conceived about the time Jon was being born.

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I'm glad someone has finally sat down and tried to sort out the utter nonsense of the Rebellion's timeline.

That said, I think Preston Jacobs does a much better job arguing against Jon being the child of Rhaegar and Lyanna than he does supporting his alternative explanations. I still think it is more likely that Jon is the child of Ashara and Ned than Ashara and Brandon. As for Daenerys, I'm not sure what the point of the obfuscation is, in-story or narratively, and I don't think the timing works out at all. The reveal would a giant "Aha! Wait... so what?"

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Unfortunately, I think a large segment of this theory rests on a mistake by GRRM. The quote that Preston uses, about Eddard not thinking of Rhaegar for years (Eddard IX), seemingly is impossible. It comes after several conversations that Eddard has about Rhaegar, in at least one of which (Eddard II) he thinks about Rhaegar. I'll just highlight the pertinent parts from the conversation:

"Your Grace, the girl is scarecely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents." It was said that Rhaegar's little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords.

"Nonetheless," Ned said, "the murder of children... it would be vile... unspeakable...""Unspeakable? the king roared. "What Aerys did to your bother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar.. how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?"

The time had come for Robert to hear the whole truth, he decided then and there. "Do you remember the Trident, Your Grace?"

"I won my crown there. How should I forget it?"

"You took a wound from Rhaegar," Ned reminded him.

There's also a bit of a change when it comes to Ned's promises. Unlike in the video, at one point Ned thinks about the harsh consequences of the promises he's kept. It's only after he's been attacked and imprisoned that he thinks of the promise being broken. That's a fairly massive shift for Ned, to the point where he's started to resign himself to death. If he's dead, he can no longer protect Jon and he'll never be able to tell him who his mother really was. That seems like the more obvious explanation to me.

On the other hand, he does highlight an interesting juxtaposition I'd never noticed before. The memories of the promise do seem to be exacerbated by discussing Dany.

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I'm glad someone has finally sat down and tried to sort out the utter nonsense of the Rebellion's timeline.

That said, I think Preston Jacobs does a much better job arguing against Jon being the child of Rhaegar and Lyanna than he does supporting his alternative explanations. I still think it is more likely that Jon is the child of Ashara and Ned than Ashara and Brandon. As for Daenerys, I'm not sure what the point of the obfuscation is, in-story or narratively, and I don't think the timing works out at all. The reveal would a giant "Aha! Wait... so what?"

N+A doesn't fit with Ned's personality.

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I'm glad someone has finally sat down and tried to sort out the utter nonsense of the Rebellion's timeline.

I think it's important to remember that GRRM deliberately keeps the timeline muddled though. When people give a timeline, it's not based on what GRRM has laid out in perfect order all in one place; it's bits and pieces of information that have been taken together and laid out in a way that makes the most sense. The timeline is a mess, but that's by design. If it were too well-explained in the series, it'd give everything away.

N+A doesn't fit with Ned's personality.

That and Ned thinks about Ashara precisely never. Notice how it's all these other people who claim that Ned loved or had an affair with Ashara. Never Ned himself.

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Nice vids. I've never understood why Ned was so haunted by the broken promise while he protected Jon and raised him.

Interesting though that Ned only thinks of "broken promises" after he's imprisoned and thinking that he's going to probably be executed. He doesn't think about broken promises before this; it's actually the opposite, where he thinks about "promises he'd made to Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he'd paid to keep them."

So how does he go from thinking he's kept his promises (presumably protecting and raising Jon as his own) to dreaming of broken ones? Perhaps it's a promise he only broke because, if he is in fact facing death, he'll no longer ever have the opportunity to keep it, whereas before keeping it may have been open-ended and possible. It's not hard to guess what such a promise might be; telling Jon the truth one day, for example.

So it is possible for Ned to have kept the promises, or have the continuing potential to do so, at one point, and then have to think of a broken promise at another point. The demarcation is his imprisonment and impending death. What was once an open-ended ability to keep a promise no longer is, rendering the promise now "broken."

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There's that. For me, though, the much stronger argument pertains to Bran's weirwood vision of a very young Ned praying "let them grow up as close as brothers..."

I interpret this to refer to Jon and Robb. If so, clearly they can't be brothers, or his phrasing makes no sense. The same logic rules out Ned as Jon's father generally, regardless of his mother's identity.

As for the new Preston Jacobs vid... I can only argue for Brandon as Jon's father if we first show Westeros has a sperm bank.

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yup thats pretty much what I thought, hilarious how a lack of information about the world's size can create these theories

If he's reading the books in-depth then he has all the information he needs to know that his theory is impossible. A person doesn't to believe in R+L=J to accept the fact that Brandon is not and cannot be Jon's father.

I wonder what his next video is gonna be about, though.

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If he's reading the books in-depth then he has all the information he needs to know that his theory is impossible. A person doesn't to believe in R+L=J to accept the fact that Brandon is not and cannot be Jon's father.

I wonder what his next video is gonna be about, though.

he said it at the end of the video, its about why Drogo married Dany. more wacky hijinks

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So how does he go from thinking he's kept his promises (presumably protecting and raising Jon as his own) to dreaming of broken ones?

Maybe he's torn up about missing Robert's funeral. He did promise to eat the boar. And have Dany spared. And help Joffrey be a better king than Robert was. And take care of Robert's children. The man certainly isn't lacking for promises. If it related to specifically Jon, why wouldn't he think of Jon?

For that matter, why is one of the only times he thinks of Jon in the entire novel reminiscing about how much Jon looks like him when he was younger? For him to be constantly thinking of Lyanna and his promise to take care of her son, but not her son (and never in connection with her) requires some very odd narrative sleight-of-hand.

I interpret this to refer to Jon and Robb. If so, clearly they can't be brothers, or his phrasing makes no sense.

Not at all. They'd be half-brothers, one the heir to the North and the other a bastard, which has a great deal of potential for resentment. Praying for them to be as close as real brothers seems pretty reasonable. I don't take that scene as much evidence on way or the other because it makes sense regardless of what the truth is. (Hell, it's technically possible it even refers to Theon, given the rest of the book, though I very much doubt it).

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This isn't damning for the argument or anything, just thought it was worth a mention.

This, this, this and more of this.

Jon is basically Rhaegar 2.0. They share the same personalities and behavioral traits. Both are introvert and melancholic guys. Both are fairly honourable men who still ditched honour when they had to choice between that or love. Only a handful of men knew Rhaegar really well, the same can be said about Jon.

Also, what is the narrative point of this theory? Dany's father is not Aerys but Rhaegar... so what? She's still a Targaryen. The Last Targaryen if you excluse R+L=J. I guess her having Stark blood could be important, but how? She has shown zero skill at skinchanging so far. And Jon remains a Stark, but Brandon is his father. Who cares?

And the idea that Jon was conceived in a dungeon in the Red Keep is laughable. Really, Ashara and Brandon had sex in a dungeon ?